


Parting Gift

by AgentWhite



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Continuation, Post-Resident Evil 4, Shifting perspective, What-If, kinda egregiously so but work with me here, rebuilding the mind, resurrection fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 08:42:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16552577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentWhite/pseuds/AgentWhite
Summary: A man pulls himself out of the sea in Spain. He slowly tells himself who he his and how he's still going. Sequel fic to "I Walk the Line, Comrade" and telling a story further and further into Resi's future with someone who never made it that far. It's a quiet start but I'm planning on coming back to this now and then.





	Parting Gift

You feel fresh air scorch your raw lungs. Salty winds sear the roiling wounds across your body as you scramble from the shallows. Your sight is clouded and bloodied, scanning for something, anything to piece together a place. You feel the ache in your skull sharpen, why? What did this to you? The ache stabs at your eyes. You see yourself staring back from the waters surface, rippled by the blood dropping from your body. The confusion, the pain, the exhaustion, you can read it in your reflection like printed ink. But it didn't provide reason. It didn't answer the 'why' burning in your mind.

You are alone, with not even yourself for company.

The sand shifts beneath you, forcing you to grasp at the knotted driftwood nearby. The pale dawn sun glitters across the sea, barely peering at you over the horizon. Shining sea soon gave way, you saw, to the grim, smouldering shadow across the bay. Smoke billowed high, flickering with flitting illumination from the flames beneath, silhouetting what remained of the castle that stood there. It's familiar to you, even seeing the wreck you can picture the glory it was in not hours ago. Hours... wait. Through the stabbing pain in your head, a clue has filtered down. Hours. You were there. Your left fist tightens as you say it. "I was there". The fire in your wounds seem to cool. At least, it's eclipsed by the pain of your focus, trying to wrench open whatever is locked in your head, screaming to tell you everything. "I was there" you tell yourself. "I saw a man"

And you did. The image of him trickles into your minds eye, a svelte man levelling his weapon before you. You see his features plain as day, teeth gritted in determination, fighting through the torment in his eyes. He had to kill you. And it destroyed him trying. What did you do to him? He was hurt. Not the wounds on his body but the pain on his face, the tension in his body. You hurt him. But he couldn't give up, he doesn't know how. Does he? How do you know? "I... knew him."

You are alone. But you weren't always.

You see his figure start to move in your mind. His mouth contorts, screaming something at you. His silence fades, his hand moves, a familiar tear seizes in your chest as his weapon fires. Another piercing shot slides through your shoulder, you see the bolt leave the wound, loosed from the weapon of another. Deep red and flesh, your head is too scrambled to glean anything more before you remember the crush of brick and mortar shatter you.

Take a breath. You need to take a breath. Ground yourself.

The sea is calm now. The smouldering ruins, the battles behind you, they may as well be another lifetime for how unfamiliar it all seems to you. There are things around you that you need to move forward. You see something in the sand, something dark and heavy, but familiar once in your hands. You pull free the blade from its sheath and gaze into the flawless metal. Your ice blue eyes stare back at you. This is you. Your companion, your greatest tool, your identity in what you do. And like you it is lying in the sand. Upon it sheath, etched lightly, you can read a name. Krauser.

The phantasmal man in your mind flashes back to you, his youthful face twisted as he screams it, his weapon ready, his jaw set. "KRAUSER!"

His image seems to melt, the colours adjust before you as he reappears. He looks younger, in pressed fatigues and he speaks again. His voice is clear with concern. A far cry, the furthest possible cry from the anger and pain you heard it before. "Krauser?"

This is you. The knife in the sand. The familiar and painful.

You are Krauser, and you are a traitor.

You affix the knife to the harness at your waist. The remnants of fabric had torn away from your skin, but enough remained. You raise yourself to find footing again and proceed forwards, this no longer seems like the place for this. The sand hardens into earth and dried weeds crumple underfoot as you pull yourself up the shore bank. You see gnarled trees poke over the hills as you trudge forward. Suddenly, new sounds empty the air. Rapid whirring, wind whipping, sand and dirt tossed about rouse more and more memories in your empty skull. Looking over the chaos in the battlefield before you descend upon it. Smelling the distant smoke of the crater you leave behind as it takes you home. Up above, the helicopter.

The machine floats overhead, stopping and turning where the rough pathway evens out. Your heart is beating in your ears, an indescribable sense is urging you to kill him or flee. Him? Before you can ponder it, his silhouette drops from the sky. The dawn sun glints from his eyes, and you're sure you see hunger in that light.

Kill him or flee.

Even from here, you can see his mouth moving. You can't hear him, the din of the helicopter blades drowns him out, but it locks your feet in place. You know the man from the helicopter. He gave you purpose, he sent you here, he shook your hand and gave it back to you. The brow on his thin face furrows, he's sizing you up like a snake circling, preparing to constrict its prey.

You aren't his asset anymore. You're a morsel, you're scraps to be cleared from the table. You are betrayed and the betrayer. A weapon cast aside. The knife in the sand.

But you will not stop now. You have survived too much to give death it's satisfaction here. Kill him. You grasp at the knife newly sheathed at your breast but your hand stops short. You don't need a weapon. You are the weapon. Focus the growing heat in your body in your arm, the will to survive screams through you, and your body answers in kind. Your arm grows with the sear in your skin and through it protrude bladed sinew and muscle. The remnants of flesh tear away. None remains to hide your nature anymore.

You see a curious movement in the man before you. His whole posture changes, he lowers his stance and spreads his feet. His body constantly shifts and moves, like water. Reactionary. He's awaiting your first move and to capitalise on your missteps. Don't you dare give him that chance.

You launch forward keeping the infectious mass of your arm in front of you. You anticipated light gunfire, you know he's carrying a sidearm, but you guessed wrong, his hand didn't shift an inch to his holster. Instead he half-steps and ducks at a speed you've never seen before. He's under your guard and his fist crushes into your ribs, hard. He loops his other hand around your back, you feel his fingers grip the back of your head and tighten. Two moves and he's emptied your lungs and got your positioning in the palm of his hand. He disappears to your flank, your vision suddenly lurches forward before going dark in the mud and earth beneath you. You gasp some air into you to fuel a clumsy swing of your bladed arm. It stops dead. A heavy blow strikes through the infected tissue. What was your elbow disintegrates. I won't let that stop you. You won't feel the pain, just fight. Fight.

His heel drives into your side. Another presses into the back of your neck, choking out a second desperate gasp. You don't need it, you can fight. Get up. He strikes hard again. Stop struggling and fight! He says something, utterly lost to the blood pumping in your ears and the adrenaline straining your body. It cannot be good. You feel the final blow. Your back explodes in white hot pain. You howl an agonised scream into the dirt, he hasn't stopped, his hand is gripped hard around your spinal column. You should be dead by now, surely, why hasn't he just killed... wait. You aren't his prey. You simply got in the way, all he came here to do was...

**No.**  Stop him.

Fight back.

**FIGHT.**

NO. **YOU ARE NOTHING WITHOUT-**

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

The chopper leaves the air humming as it ascends away with its master and cargo. Small noises start coming back, animals in the undergrowth sensing its safe to come back. The body of a man, barely clothed in tattered remnants, somehow begins to stir. The ground around him has been made an abattoir painted with his blood, and somehow life yet lingers in his carcass. His fingers claw at the earth, pulling himself towards the more dense vegetation. He breathes deeply. He breathes slowly. He takes in the subtle disquiet of the nature around him.

“Jack Krauser”

The belaboured human voice causes a stir. The birds stop on their branches for a moment to register him before flitting away. He rests himself against a tree, numb to the pain he was sure he should be feeling after the ordeals shuffling in his muddled memory. He reaches down to pull his legs towards him, but they responded, and pushed him back into a more comfortable sit. He felt the sickening shatter of his back through his entire body, this shouldn't be possible. That he was alive at all was straining possibility. He ponder it breifly as he looked down at his left arm. Where metallic chitin had formed blades of his very sinew, the flesh ad appeared to regress. Disjointed ends occasionally poked out from an otherwise smooth surface, but to all intents and purposes his sword-arm had reformed into a skinless, nigh-necrotic looking arm. It was curiously warm to the touch, but not angrily so. More comforting, familiar. His body battered, misshapen and scarred, but whole and functioning. The Plagas parting gift.

“I am Jack Krauser.” He muttered, startling a nearby rabbit. The small animal looked at him. It's little nose seemed very active, and while surprised it didn't seem to find him threatening. Jack looked at the furry thing and let out a deep, tired sigh. “So what the fuck happens now?”


End file.
